Threat management is not fun. For anyone.(Derailed, Discuss MMOs instead)

Look, I understand its a classic way to do threat, but in my honest opinion I believe it just makes the game less fun. All of a sudden good dps players are not good because they do their rotations properly and do high damage, they are now "good" because they know when to not attack. This is silly, If you were to reverse it, it would be like ok tank, the only way to hold aggro is to stand there and hold block.

Halting actions in combat for this sort of reason makes it clunky and a chaotic mess when you have both a good damage dealer or a bad tank. Now, if tanks did their rotation and never lost aggro, the only time they would lose it is if they were not performing optimally. In that case, you either work with your tank to get better or find another one. The entire party is not punished as much as if dps accidentally throws one more global than normal of their rotation and now the group wipes.

So in the end I would suggest the threat system be tied to how well the tank performs, not how well the healer and dps are at not doing their job.

Edit: to clarify I do not mean that dps and healers no longer generate threat, I just think that if a tank is doing their rotations properly (I.E. Playing good), they should not lose aggro. The exceptions to this would be major level and gear disparities.

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McShave

I think I like the idea of having to choose some utility abilities/ talents instead of 100% damage (so you don't pull threat). Something to rest in Alpha 2

Dezemi

My addition to the pile (sorry if this was mentioned, I read most comments before replying but not all c: ):

Managing threat can be fun IF it does not all come down to the tank's skill level.

AoC wants to encourage people to play together. And difficulty is often not an issue when you play with people you know. But imagine puging group content as a healer or DPS if the tank skill floor is high. It will be extremely boring (even more so than usual) for above average DPSers and healers to play with below average tanks since they... well, quite literally can't play at their fullest potential due to the tank not being able to handle it. Thus it will just make the bed for even more segregation between player base and discourage good DPSers primarily from helping out pug groups every now and then.

How can one solve this then? My suggestion would be to give all base classes some form of way to deal with threat. A rogue or ranger would perhaps faint their presence with some kind of "hide" action (in TT terms) or "faint" (in common MMORPG terms). A cleric or bard would perhaps put something on the tank to make them "extra shiny" (and thus more threatening) to distract foes and increase the tanks threat gained. A mage would use something similar to "fade" (MMORPG term) or mirror image (TT term) to decrease their threat generation. These are just general suggestions, but you get where I am going. Have the abilities have short durations and slightly longer cooldowns to increase the skill requirement while avoiding the mentality to "spam this on CD".

Liniker

just play a fighter with plate and shield/sword.... tanks NEED threat management

Blandmarrow

Just a thought, how about instead of putting the design focus on dps classes to be only that, dps, there are actual mechanics they need to perform which are not soley focused on damage.

Dygz

Sathrago wrote: »

Halting actions in combat for this sort of reason makes it clunky and a chaotic mess when you have both a good damage dealer or a bad tank. Now, if tanks did their rotation and never lost aggro, the only time they would lose it is if they were not performing optimally. In that case, you either work with your tank to get better or find another one. The entire party is not punished as much as if dps accidentally throws one more global than normal of their rotation and now the group wipes.

That is really a soloer complaint.
The foundation of RPG combat is to synergize with the other players in your group to devise tactics and strategies which defeat your encounters. With the group having a diverse config of classes that can maximize everyone's strengths and cover for everyone's weaknesses.
Yes. Part of that is learning when you are doing too much and curbing some of your strengths so you don't overwhelm the others in your group.

Last year of junior high, at 9th grade camp. My best friend and I participated in a 3-legged race.
I was sure we would win because we were both fast runners.
He was a top-tier cross-country runner. I was a top-tier sprinter.
We failed miserably. I was shocked!
He told me the whole point of the 3-legged race is working together. He wasn't capable of matching my sprinting because his skill-set is different. I should have adjusted my tactics for a group endeavor, rather than what I would do solo.

In MMORPGs, combat is not supposed to be, "I just focus on my rotations so I can DPS as fast as possible without any repercussions from tour opponents."
MMORPG combat is not supposed to be, "I just focus on healing everything as fast as possible without my opponents figuring out that if they kill me first, it will be much easier for them to kill my mates."

We should be expecting NPCs to figure out who is the greater threat at any given moment.
And that perspective might change depending on who is doing the most damage or who is doing the most healing.
So... yes... you might have to realize you are doing to much damage and let someone else gain some threat.
Yes. You might have to slow down your healing and let someone else gain some threat.
Someone might need to quickly generate more threat to act as a distraction/decoy.

The OP is basically saying we should be able to ignore that we are standing in the fire, so we can just focus on our individual rotations. It's not fun to have to move out of the fire. We shouldn't have to stop attacking or stop healing just because we are now standing in a pyre of debri.

Pay attention to the changing dynamics of the encounter.
Expect one of those changes to be enemies choosing different targets based on what the individual members of your group are doing.
Also expect one person in your group to be the best at whatever the equivalent of Taunt/Grapple is.

Vaknar

For right now, I won't merge this topic into our official one on threat mitigation (and management!), but I urge you to please leave your feedback on those official threads as well!

Thanks all! We appreciate all of your thoughts, opinions, suggestions, and feedback

Dolyem

I understand where the OP is coming from, but honestly I enjoy having to actually consider my attacks as a dps and the possibility of pulling aggro due to going all out. Not much fun if I can freely go at 100% at all times since that's just utilizing the same optimal rotation over and over again. Sure I want to go 100% here and there. But that should be paired with a tanks ability to keep up with those 100% bursts, and it should be challenging to keep up with. At least that is how I see it being enjoyable. Sure it can be frustrating when having to rely on your party to coordinate, but thats part of the fun to me as well, instead of being able to disregard what everyone else is doing.

Noaani

As with anything, the more tools players have at their disposal, the more fun a mechanic can be.

If DPS all only had one attack type, DPS would be boring. DPS is only interesting when you have interesting mechanics attached to damage abilities, and is only ever as interesting ad those mechanics.

Same with threat. If all tanks have is a taunt that increases threat, it's boring. If they have abilities that do more than that though, it can be far more interesting.

A story I've told a few times on these forums seems fitting for this thread. In EQ2, for quite a while, my guilds standard pull technique was for the tank to grab the mob, and then for me to use an ability that would deal massive damage, but leave me with no mana (was dealing literally 10 times the amount of damage as the second highest damage ability in the game).

After using this ability, I would obviously pull the mob off the tank, I'd be so far ahead in threat that regular taunts would have no hope of being able to pull the boss off me before I was killed. However, the tank would use a ability that would increase his threat position by one. Since I was on top of the threat list and he was a distant second, that increase in position on the list then puts the tank at exactly one point of threat above me. Then I'd use an item that lowered my threat by 24 positions on the list.

The end result is that the tank is so far ahead on the hate list that it is almost impossible for anyone to catch him up, and I am at the bottom of the list (with no mana, but that wasnt much of an issue).

Most other guilds didnt do this, because they had other mechanics they used to keep threat on their tanks, this was just one method my guild used.

This was a fun mechanic. If you look at threat as just a tank standing there using taunts with no interest added to them as abilities then yeah, threat management sucks.

However, that is a fault with individual games and their design, it isnt a factor that is inherent to all games.

Ruerik

You do not speak for everyone. Threat management is fun for me.

If you want to go ham on a boss and not pull threat, use your threat reduction skills, which exist in tank/healer/dps games for a reason.
If you want to go ham on a boss, get a better tank.

Your ideas remove depth from a RPG, making it less fun.

You speak for yourself, not for me.

novercalis

Taerrik wrote: »

You do not speak for everyone. Threat management is fun for me.

If you want to go ham on a boss and not pull threat, use your threat reduction skills, which exist in tank/healer/dps games for a reason.
If you want to go ham on a boss, get a better tank.

Your ideas remove depth from a RPG, making it less fun.

You speak for yourself, not for me.

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Iskiab

I’m surprised to see so many say that they like games where threat management is an issue. Which games? It’s something that has disappeared from modern MMOs and was generally disliked when it was around.

Aggro management, non-solo friendly and slow recovery were the biggest reasons why people left EQ and went to WoW. I don’t understand people who want to recreate mechanics that killed MMOs.

Azherae

Iskiab wrote: »

I’m surprised to see so many say that they like games where threat management is an issue. Which games? It’s something that has disappeared from modern MMOs and was generally disliked when it was around.

Aggro management, non-solo friendly and slow recovery were the biggest reasons why people left EQ and went to WoW. I don’t understand people who want to recreate mechanics that killed MMOs.

Those people are probably the sort of people who think WoW is what 'killed MMOs'.

Iskiab

Azherae wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

I’m surprised to see so many say that they like games where threat management is an issue. Which games? It’s something that has disappeared from modern MMOs and was generally disliked when it was around.

Aggro management, non-solo friendly and slow recovery were the biggest reasons why people left EQ and went to WoW. I don’t understand people who want to recreate mechanics that killed MMOs.

Those people are probably the sort of people who think WoW is what 'killed MMOs'.

They’d be wrong. I didn’t play WoW for a long time after it was released because it killed my EQ guild. Looking back now I see that people moved because it was a better game, most of the people conflate the good memories they had with the game mechanics themselves. Some things were fun, but threat management and slow recovery had nothing to do with it.

Azherae

Iskiab wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

I’m surprised to see so many say that they like games where threat management is an issue. Which games? It’s something that has disappeared from modern MMOs and was generally disliked when it was around.

Aggro management, non-solo friendly and slow recovery were the biggest reasons why people left EQ and went to WoW. I don’t understand people who want to recreate mechanics that killed MMOs.

Those people are probably the sort of people who think WoW is what 'killed MMOs'.

They’d be wrong. I didn’t play WoW for a long time after it was released because it killed my EQ guild. Looking back now I see that people moved because it was a better game, most of the people conflate the good memories they had with the game mechanics themselves. Some things were fun, but threat management and slow recovery had nothing to do with it.

To each their own, I guess?

But I feel like the fact that you're surprised is technically the point to note, as you did. If a lot of people who like it happen to be here, then it's likely that those people find it fun. Are those people the majority of MMO gamers? Probably not.

Ashes is full of things like that, so you'll find subgroups who want all sorts of 'weird' and 'oldschool' things that the sort of person who finds WoW to be more fun doesn't necessarily appreciate. Good luck to Intrepid in managing that.

pgt1027

Iskiab wrote: »

I’m surprised to see so many say that they like games where threat management is an issue. Which games? It’s something that has disappeared from modern MMOs and was generally disliked when it was around.

Aggro management, non-solo friendly and slow recovery were the biggest reasons why people left EQ and went to WoW. I don’t understand people who want to recreate mechanics that killed MMOs.

What killed MMORPGs is MMORPGs trying to not be MMORPGs anymore. What killed them was trying to change MMORPGs into something that would appeal to people who fundamentally do not like MMORPGs. And what you're left with is a genre that appeals to basically no one except a dwindling vestigial fanbase. And instead of realizing this mistake, they double down and try to squeeze more and more money out of their dwindling fan bases.

By the way, WoW had threat mechanic, so leaving EQ for WoW to escape threat mechanics would be like leaving the United States for Mexico to escape hot temperatures. I don't really remember anyone having a problem with threat mechanics themselves, I think the move to essentially get rid of threat mechanics was based more around the desire to create safe, predictable, sterile content that wouldn't upset the remaining pay pigs.

Ace1234

I agree with OP. The standard "CC" style design of how aggro works, generally just means "less gameplay" in the situations where you successfully gain threat as a tank. (At least the kind of gameplay I find fun, such as positoning, spacial awareness, timing, ya know general combat skills basically.) "Threat" just replaces those skill-checks with a management that is far less engaging than alternative options- imo.

Noaani

Ace1234 wrote: »

I agree with OP. The standard "CC" style design of how aggro works, generally just means "less gameplay" in the situations where you successfully gain threat as a tank. (At least the kind of gameplay I find fun, such as positoning, spacial awareness, timing, ya know general combat skills basically.) "Threat" just replaces those skill-checks with a management that is far less engaging than alternative options- imo.

I'm not sure I follow.

Games with threat mechanics (even basic threat mechanics) still require positioning, timing, general awareness, all of the things you are talking about here.

In a hypothetical sense, I understand and even agree with you that games where tanks don't have to put some major thought in to positioning, timing or awareness would suck. The thing is, I've not seen a game where a tank doesn't need to think about these things, regardless of threat mechanics.

novercalis

Iskiab wrote: »

I’m surprised to see so many say that they like games where threat management is an issue. Which games? It’s something that has disappeared from modern MMOs and was generally disliked when it was around.

Aggro management, non-solo friendly and slow recovery were the biggest reasons why people left EQ and went to WoW. I don’t understand people who want to recreate mechanics that killed MMOs.

Incorrect - WoW was a huge feeling of an MMORPG.

seamless world, artistic graphic, SOOOOO many Questing, where "EverQuest" Questing was few and far between.

They still kept the social aspect of things Until WotLK.
A lot of people left WoW too and went to L2, RuneScape and back to EQ.

EQ killed themselves at Luclin and nail in the bed with the PoP expansion. That and the refusal to upgrade its dated look when every other mmo looked soo much better. But in the end a lot of us mmorpg gamers who grew up to this genre all ended up going to TLP or P99 / L2 / Runescape (dont know much about this game)

Why because their games was fundamentally sound and damn difficult.

novercalis

Noaani wrote: »

Ace1234 wrote: »

I agree with OP. The standard "CC" style design of how aggro works, generally just means "less gameplay" in the situations where you successfully gain threat as a tank. (At least the kind of gameplay I find fun, such as positoning, spacial awareness, timing, ya know general combat skills basically.) "Threat" just replaces those skill-checks with a management that is far less engaging than alternative options- imo.

I'm not sure I follow.

Games with threat mechanics (even basic threat mechanics) still require positioning, timing, general awareness, all of the things you are talking about here.

In a hypothetical sense, I understand and even agree with you that games where tanks don't have to put some major thought in to positioning, timing or awareness would suck. The thing is, I've not seen a game where a tank doesn't need to think about these things, regardless of threat mechanics.

apparently FF14 from what I've read. Some tank can do something a few times and then stop doing anything and he will still have threat for the next 10 min.
paraphrasing

Noaani

novercalis wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Ace1234 wrote: »

I agree with OP. The standard "CC" style design of how aggro works, generally just means "less gameplay" in the situations where you successfully gain threat as a tank. (At least the kind of gameplay I find fun, such as positoning, spacial awareness, timing, ya know general combat skills basically.) "Threat" just replaces those skill-checks with a management that is far less engaging than alternative options- imo.

I'm not sure I follow.

Games with threat mechanics (even basic threat mechanics) still require positioning, timing, general awareness, all of the things you are talking about here.

In a hypothetical sense, I understand and even agree with you that games where tanks don't have to put some major thought in to positioning, timing or awareness would suck. The thing is, I've not seen a game where a tank doesn't need to think about these things, regardless of threat mechanics.

apparently FF14 from what I've read. Some tank can do something a few times and then stop doing anything and he will still have threat for the next 10 min.
paraphrasing

Well, I would agree that this is a fairly shit way of doing things, if it is indeed like this.

However, this is an issue with the design of one game (an issue I would agree with), not an issue with the general design of threat in MMO's in general.

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